JR: Do you have any tips on writing epistolary novel set in the modern age?
Resources Mentioned:
Dracula by Bram Stoker
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JR: Do you have any tips on writing epistolary novel set in the modern age?
Resources Mentioned:
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
A couple of examples of epistolatroy fiction — It’s a short story not a novel, but “Wikihistory” by Desmond Warzel is a good example of a modern spin — in the form of newsgroup postings. https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/
From the seventies, “The Miernik Dossier” by Charles McCarry is in the form of intelligence reports by a secret agent, and although
I haven’t read “The Anderson Tapes” by Lawrence Sanders the movie suggests the book is in the form of surveilance tape transcripts.
One of my favorites from the past decade is, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.”
In listening to the episode it hit me while you mentioned a story that in part used log entries to home base as the story vehicle, you missed a very obvious recent story that is primarily done as log entries. (Not All but most of the tale)
The Martian by Andy Weir
Anyway, loving the podcast and looking forward to the next part.
I have an awesome example of a modern epistolary novel. My friend Camille Griep wrote Letters to Zell, which is a retelling/continuation of several fairy tales through letters written by “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” and “Sleeping Beauty” to their friend Zell (“Rapunzel”) who has moved on from her Story and living her life elsewhere. We never meet Zell. We just have the letters from the others TO her.
It’s amazingly well written and I highly recommend it.
Sounds interesting, I will check it out.
I recently released an epistolary novella that takes the form of a personal blog (and was originally a series of blog posts on my site) entitled The Secret Name. I won’t be so bold and say it’s a good example, but it is an example!
A good space opera example might be illuminae by Anie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff which uses emails, records, and even a bit of text art collected from the logs of a damaged capital ship to tell its story.
I was talking about this episode with my wife and she observed there was another example that sort of uses this format.
The “West Wing” episode “The Stackhouse Filibuster” uses the framework of multiple members of the WH staff writing letters/emails home to hang the episode structure on.